THE WRONG SIGNAL
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• -It's the best news yet for the rogue oper
ator . no doubt about it." That pithy comment should grab everyone's attention, not least the hundreds — some might argue thousands — of cowboy hauliers who regularly bend or break the rules at the expense of law-abiding operators.
So who is this pariah of doom? Disturbingly, it is the senior enforcement manager of a Traffic Area Office who will shortly be reporting not to his LA, but to the local Vehicle Inspectorate district manager. This move, part of a general shake-up in enforcement in which the traffic examiners are being merged with the Vehicle Inspectorate, has already been slammed by senior examiners who are threatening to stop handling prosecutions in magistrates courts.
Meanwhile their bosses, the LAs, have written to the VI expressing concern over a possible decline in standards. Sour grapes perhaps? Changes to long established working practices often produce howls of protest and warnings of calamity which in practice are proved to be groundless. On the face of it, why have two separate enforcement functions?
Or is the merger another example of the Dip searching for improvements in efficiency which are going ahead too fast, with too little regard for the consequences? If seven LAs have become sufficiently concerned to write to the VI we have to assume that the problem is a real one.
And as for the cowboys? They must be rubbing their hands together with glee at the sight of the two major enforcement agencies bickering over who knows best. At a time when Britain is suffering from the worst crimewave on record is that really the sort of message we want to be sending to dodgy hauliers?